Fall Movie League: Week 9

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Newt Scamander and his exotic, magical creatures dominated the box office this weekend, as the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opened with a solid $74.4 million. That number falls right in line with the range of projections, though maybe on the slightly lower end, as some estimates were for as much as $90 million. This is the first of five planned Fantastic Beasts films, and it should do enough business, plus be bolstered by the Thanksgiving holiday. The $74.4 million is also about $3 million below the lowest Harry Potter release, 2007’s Order of the Phoenix, which debuted to $77.1 million. That’s probably not an unexpected development, since it doesn’t have the Potter “name brand” affixed to it.

The glass half empty case is that $74.4 million is a slight but not unexpected disappointment in that regard. Glass half full case is that it is impressive to be so close without that brand name in the title. On the T-meter front, it received a 77% rating, which is, again, a solid number, which results in a revenue of $57.3 million got Chris. All of the Harry Potter films went on to gross at least $249 million, with most doing significantly more than that. Based on this opening, I think $249 million would be on the high end of the box office tally, and therefore, Fantastic Beasts seems unlikely to hit the $200 million cap, which Chris needs considering he paid $39 for it.

The only other movie to release this weekend that was on a roster was Edge of Seventeen, which was highly reviewed, scoring a 95% T-meter. Unfortunately for Paula, it failed to generate much attention, pulling in only $4.8 million, which is $4.6 in revenue for her. It’s a shame too, as I saw Edge of Seventeen on Sunday and it is as good as the reviews say it is. That $4.8 million is about half of what predictions were for it, which is not a good sign for it going forward. It seems as though Fantastic Beasts sucked up all of the audience and left only scraps for the other wide releases. Bleed for This, a boxing movie, only made $2.3 million, which was also about half of its anticipated opening weekend.

Preview:

This weekend features three films getting releases, all of which are opening today (Wednesday) in anticipation of the long Thanksgiving weekend. Moana, a Disney animated film is sailing high with an impressive 97% on Rotten Tomatoes after 107 reviews. It is expected to be the #1 movie of the weekend. Allied, a World War II spy movie by Robert Zemeckis starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, is sitting at 64% and 89 total reviews. Lastly, Bad Santa 2 is down at 26% after 62 reviews.

On the horizon, a few more movies have early reviews, meaning we only have a handful of movies left that do not have any reviews attached to them yet. The Founder and Fences both have a 90% T-meter after 10 reviews. Patriots Day has gotten 9 reviews so far and is 89% on the T-meter. Collateral Beauty, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Assassin’s Creed, Passengers, Hidden Figures (which Greg just picked up in conjunction with dropping Gold), and Why Him are the only ones we are left to wonder about.